Most of received banknote processing apparatuses ordinarily employ a temporary reserving section so that banknotes are accommodated in an accommodation section after it is confirmed that the transaction of the banknotes is accepted by temporarily reserving them in the temporary reserving section. There is an apparatus disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,747,492 of the applicant, as a received banknote processing apparatus including the temporary reserving section. The apparatus disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,747,492 includes stackers (S1 to S6) which accommodate banknotes after they are sorted according to the denominations thereof and to the upper portions of which temporary reserving sections (SH1 to SH6) are disposed.
A plurality of banknote receiving transactions are continuously processed by the above apparatus as described below.
First, when the received banknotes of an initial transaction are supplied to a hopper, the denominations of the banknotes fed from the hopper are discriminated by a denomination discrimination section, and the banknotes are transported to the temporary reserving sections (SH1 to SH6) disposed to the upper portion of the stackers (S1 to S6) for respective denominations according to denominations thereof. Then, the detail of the received banknotes is checked against a result of processing performed by the apparatus, and when they agree with each other, the banknotes are released from the temporary reserving sections (SH1 to SH6) and sequentially accommodated in the stackers (S1 to S6) by depressing a banknote reception accepting button. Second and subsequent banknote receiving transactions are also processed likewise, and even if a failure such as a jam and the like occurs while, for example, a second banknote receiving transaction is being performed, since only the banknotes of the second transaction exist in the temporary reserving sections (SH1 to SH6), they are not mixed with the banknotes of the initial transaction.
Accordingly, as a failure recovery processing of the apparatus in which a failure occurs, it is sufficient to supply the banknotes reserved in the temporary reserving sections (SH1 to SH6), the banknotes remaining in the hopper, and the banknotes located on a transport path in which the jam occurs to the hopper again together so that they are processed.
In contrast, there are available many received banknote processing apparatuses which have a simple structure without temporary reserving sections to make the cost of the apparatus less expensive. In the received banknote processing apparatus having no such temporary reserving sections, when a plurality of banknote receiving transactions are continuously processed and a failure, such as a jam or the like, occurs while a second or subsequent transaction is being processed, troublesome failure recovery processing occurs. When it is assumed, for example, that a initial banknote receiving transaction is normally processed, and a failure, such as a jam or the like, occurs while a second banknote receiving transaction is being performed, the banknotes of the first accepted transaction, and the banknotes of the second transaction which is not accepted and being processed, are mixedly accommodated in the state of accommodating the banknotes in the respective stackers. To perform processing for recovering from the above failure, it is necessary to take out all of the mixed banknotes from the stackers, as well as to gather the banknotes remaining in the hopper and the banknotes located on the transport path in which the jam occurred, to have the operator manually count the banknotes, and to separate the banknotes of the first accepted transaction.
Accordingly, when a failure occurs in the received banknote processing apparatus without the temporary reserving sections, a recovery job of the apparatus is very troublesome, and there is a possibility that banknotes are erroneously processed. As described above, it is effective to provide the received banknote processing apparatus with the temporary reserving sections to promptly and accurately recover from a failure occurring in the apparatus when a plurality of banknote receiving transactions are continuously processed. However, provision of the temporary reserving sections is disadvantageous in that the mechanism of the apparatus becomes complex, as well as increasing the cost thereof.
Further, the received banknote processing apparatus which is not provided with the temporary reserving sections to reduce cost has a problem in that recovery processing when a failure, such as a jam or the like, occurs is very troublesome and there is a possibility that banknotes are erroneously processed.
To overcome the above problems, the applicant already proposed a received banknote processing apparatus arranged simply by providing no temporary reserving section to reduce cost and to make it unnecessary to manually separate the banknotes of an accepted transaction even if a failure, such as a jam or the like, occurs (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-74464 A).
On the other hand, users of received banknote processing apparatuses have needs for ranking banknotes which are subjected to reception processing according to a damaged state and accommodating the banknotes after they are sorted to banknotes suitable for reuse (hereinafter, called “usable banknote”) and banknotes unsuitable for reuse (hereinafter, called “damaged banknote”).
There is already proposed a damaged banknote extraction apparatus and a cash handling apparatus including the damaged banknote extraction apparatus which meet these needs (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-242549 A). However, even if these apparatuses are used, a result of the determination lacks reproducibility in the vicinity of the threshold value of criterion of a fitness determination. That is, it is assumed that a plurality of banknote receiving transactions are continuously processed, and a failure, such as a jam or the like, occurs while a second or subsequent banknote reception transaction is being performed. In this case, when, for example, an initial banknote receiving transaction is normally processed and the failure, such as the jam or the like, occurs while the second banknote reception transaction is being processed, the banknotes of the first accepted transaction and the banknotes of the second transaction, which have not been accepted and are being processed, are mixedly accommodated in the respective stackers. To cope with the above problem, all of the banknotes located in the respective stackers are collected and placed on the hopper again, the denominations and the fitness of the banknotes are determined again, only the accepted banknotes of the initial transaction are accommodated in the respective stackers, and the other banknotes are transported to a reject section. However, since the determination of fitness lacks the reproducibility described above, there is a possibility that a result of the determination is different from a previous result of the determination, from which a problem arises in that processing is finished regardless of whether or not that the accepted number of the banknotes of the initial transaction is reached.